Time Step Simulation: Schedule Dialog
See Also
The Schedule Dialog is opened from the Schedules page of the Time Step Simulation dialog by right-clicking on the Schedules grid and choosing Insert New Schedule or Show Dialog for an existing schedule. This dialog is used to define or modify a schedule. A schedule is a list of time points together with a numeric, conditional (Yes/No or Closed/Open) or text value that defines the "shape" of how a quantity should vary in time. The time points are listed on the grid section of the dialog. The dialog also contains a number of options that define the schedule.
Schedule Dialog Local Menu Actions
The Schedule Dialog grid, as with any other Simulator grid has a local menu that is accessed by right-clicking on any cell. The most important options of this local menu are:
Insert New Point(s)
Select this option to bring up the New Schedule Point Dialog. This is the same at the New Time Point Dialog but is used here to insert Schedule time points.
SchedPoint records > Change Time
Select this option if you want to change the date/time of a schedule time point. The selection brings up the Change Time Dialog, which is the same Change Timepoint Time Dialog used here to change the date/time of a schedule time point.
Delete
Use this option to delete the current schedule time point.
Set/Toggle/Columns > Select Column(s)
Use this option to select an entire column. Note that you can use this option and then delete all the time points.
Copy/Paste/Send > Send All to Excel
Use this option to copy the values in the Schedule grid to Excel. You can then easily modify the values using Excel and then Paste back the new schedule points into Simulator.
Timepoint List Options
These options provide shortcuts to some of the local menu actions related to the maintenance of the list of Schedule time points:
Add Point
Adds a new time point at the end of the list. By default the date/time of the new time point is one hour after the last time point. If there are no time points in the list, a time point is inserted with today’s date at 12:00 AM.
Delete Point
Deletes the selected time point(s).
Shift Date Time Buttons
Use these buttons to move by one week, day, hour, minute or second the date time of the selected time point.
Schedule Options
The upper part of the Schedule Dialog is used to define other schedule options:
Schedule Name
Enter the name you want to give to the schedule. This is how you will identify the schedule when you set up schedule subscriptions. If the user does not specify otherwise, Simulator assigns names Sched1, Sched2, etc. as new schedules are created.
Name Suffix
This is a string automatically generated by Simulator, which is used to display the main characteristics of the Schedule together with the name. The Name Suffix is composed of three strings separated by periods:
[Num, Y/N, or Txt]: Indicates whether the schedule values are numeric, conditional or text.
[NPER or PERadbhcmds]: The string indicates whether the schedule is non-periodic (NPER) or periodic (PER). If it is periodic, it indicates the days (a), hours (b), minutes (c), and seconds (d) of the period.
[Nn]: Indicates the number of time points (n) of the Schedule.
By looking at the Schedule suffix, the user effectively avoids writing long names for the Schedule to characterize its properties.
Value Type
Numeric, conditional (Yes/No or Closed/Open) or Text. When you toggle this selection, the value column in the Schedule grid changes its heading from Numerical Value to Yes/No Value to Text Value, and the numerical cells (blue) are changed to Yes/No cells (green), indicating that you can toggle the cell value, to blank for Text Value. Note that numeric fields, such as Load MW, Schedule Transactions MW etc., will subscribe to a Numeric Schedule, whereas fields such as Line Status will subscribe to a Yes/No Schedule. Text schedules can be subscribed to custom string and memo fields. For more details on how to subscribe to schedules, see the Schedule Subscriptions topic.
Interpolate Values Between Time Points
The purpose of creating a schedule is to modify data that does not need to be defined for each individual Time Step Simulation time point. When this option is checked, the value for a schedule will be interpolated for the current time point based on the values specified for the schedule time points.
Apply Schedule Points as Events
When this option is checked, schedule values will only be applied if the time point matches the schedule time point. The values will not change for time points that do not match a schedule time point. For example, assume that a schedule has time points at 6:00 AM with a value of 50 and 11:00 AM with a value of 75. Assume that a generator is subscribed to this schedule. Also, assume that the time step simulation contains time points for every hour between 1:00 AM and 11:00 PM. For the time points between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM the output of the generator will remain at what is was in the base case, unless of course there is some other input data that changes the output of this generator. If there is some other input or manual intervention that changes the output of the generator, the output of the generator will not be changed again by the schedule until 6:00 AM. At 6:00 AM the output of the generator will change to 50. At 7:00 AM the output of the generator will not be updated and remain at 50, unless the output of the generator is changed by some other input or manual intervention. The same is true for time points 8:00 AM through 10:00 AM. At 11:00 AM the output of the generator will change to 75 because of the schedule.
When this option is not checked, the schedule will be applied at every time point. Assume the same example as above. For the time points between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM the output of the generator will not be impacted by the schedule. At 6:00 AM the schedule will be applied and the output of the generator will change to 50. At 7:00 AM the schedule will be applied again and the output will again be set to 50. The same thing will occur at the time points between 8:00 AM and 10:00 AM. At 11:00 AM the schedule will be applied and the output will change to 75. At each time point after 11:00 AM the schedule will be applied at the output will change to 75. This means that if some other input or manual intervention causes the output of the generator to change between time points, at each time point the schedule will be applied and the output of the generator will be updated to match the schedule.
Periodic Options
A schedule becomes periodic when its values are repeated every certain period specified in days, hours, minutes and/or seconds. A logic condition for a schedule to be periodic is that its period be larger than the time span between the date/time of the last time point and the first time point in the schedule. For instance, if the schedule has three time points at 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM, the span is 3 hours. Thus the schedule period must be 4 hours or more. If this condition does not hold, Simulator issues a warning message.
Repeat Every
Check this box to make the schedule periodic. The schedule must have a total period greater than 0 to be considered periodic. The schedule period is the number of days plus the number of hour plus the number of hours plus the number of seconds specified.
Days
A positive integer that specifies the number of days of the schedule period.
Hours
A positive integer from 0 to 23 that specifies the number of hours of the schedule period.
Minutes
A positive integer from 0 to 59 that specifies the number of minutes of the scheduled period.
Seconds
A positive integer from 0 to 59 that specifies the number of seconds of the scheduled period.
Valid From
When checked, this option sets a validity date for the schedule, whether it is periodic or not. No schedule actions will be applied to the power system before this date. By default, the Valid From date is set to Jan 01, 2000, at 12:00 AM.
Valid Until
When checked, this option sets a validity date for the schedule, whether it is periodic or not. No schedule actions will be applied to the power system after this date. By default, the Valid Until date is set to Dec 31, 2030, at 12:00 AM.